Jalisco (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
276-300 (334 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mexica employed feathers to make lightweight objects utilized by elites and gods in various secular, religious, political, and military contexts. The use of feathers is represented in murals, codices, ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, and even some of these objects that have managed to survive more than five...
Skirts and Scorpions: Female Power and Poisonous Creatures (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Tratado de supersticiones (1626) Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón documented invocations and prayers to pre-Hispanic divinities to assure a good catch/hunt or to protect against poisonous/painful bites/stings. This confirmed that these divinities remained important the local consciousness even 100 years after...
Slow violence and environmental inequality in the Valley of Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Valley of Mexico project was unprecedented in its documentation of demographic, social, and environmental processes over millennia. Nevertheless, its findings are limited because participants did not systematically collect archaeological data about settlements after the Spanish...
Social Status and Ritual Practice at a Middle Formative Residential Complex at Tlalancaleca, Puebla (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fieldwork recently undertaken at Tlalancaleca, Puebla, explored a residential complex dating to the Texoloc phase (650 – 500 BC) of the Middle Formative period. Horizontal excavations exposed a residential platform and several wattle and daub rooms flanking a central patio. This paper presents interpretations regarding: (1) the status of inhabitants; and (2)...
Sonic Places: Preliminary Acoustic Analysis in Early Colonial Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Everyday places that bodies inhabit are rarely without sound. Sound has a material impact in structuring the relations between people and their surroundings through the vibrations that occur as a response to an activity or event in a given space and time. The auditory system receives this structured sensory information and rhythmically encodes the body with...
Sound Practices in Late Postclassic to Early Colonial Tlaxcallan: Applying a Community of Practice Framework to Investigate Sonic Expression (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In archaeological interpretations of Postclassic period central Mexico, sound practices and related assemblages are often conceptualized as unchanging, standardized, and fixed to a common Mesoamerican religious system under the umbrella of Aztec cultural expression. This neglect of other polities’ sound...
The Southern Neighborhood Center at the Tlajinga District, Teotihuacan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Life in Teotihuacan's urban neighborhoods revolved around the social infrastructure of local public spaces featuring temples, plazas, and other buildings with civic functions. Recent investigations in the Tlajinga district demonstrate that even on Teotihuacan's outer periphery these spaces could be quite elaborate, with structures elevated on talud-tablero...
Spanish Contact (1982)
The principal institutions of Spanish contact were, as elsewhere on the Spanish frontier, the mission, the mine, the hacienda, and the military. The mission contact situation, handled by the religious arm of Spanish administration, will be discussed more fully in later pages. The few sections that follow immediately here are an attempt to sketch some aspects of the non-mission aspects of seventeenth and eighteenth-century north Mexican society in order to give a more complete picture of the...
Spatial Distribution of Ceramic Sherds at the Plaza of the Columns, Teotihuacan, Mexico (2018)
During the Early Classic period (250-550 CE), Teotihuacan in what is now central Mexico was the largest city in the Western hemisphere. Occupying 76,400 m2 of Teotihuacan’s ceremonial center, the Plaza of the Columns, which consists of three mounds and the surrounding area, has been posited as the site of a palatial-administrative complex. The occupational history of the Plaza of the Columns is interpreted in light of a three-dimensional distribution map of ceramics, organized according to two...
Spatial Distribution of Ceramics and Lithics at the Plaza of the Columns Complex, Teotihuacan, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teotihuacan (150 BCE-550 CE), located in the northeastern Basin of Mexico, was a large urban center that was built of a heterogenous ethnic and socio-economic population. The Plaza of the Columns and the Plaza North of the Sun Pyramid, in Teotihuacan’s core ceremonial zone, are posited as palatial-administrative complexes. The occupants of these two complexes...
Spatial Structure and Ancient Neighbourhoods: A Re-evaluation of Methods and Interpretations at Teotihuacan, Mexico (2018)
In a 2012 article exploring the spatial structure of post-Tlamimilolpa phase Teotihuacan, Mexico, we invoked both a materialist body of method-theory known as space syntax and an interactional theory of community development. Through this framework, we discussed community structure and systems of authority expressed by the architectural masses and spaces of the city. In this paper, the authors revisit this approach, with fresh eyes and in the context of our growing knowledge of ancient urbanism....
Spoiler Alert: Bioarchaeological Study of Cremation Funerary Urns with an Application of Computer Tomography (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Tzintzuntzan, Capital of the Tarascan Empire: New Perspectives" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nine urns from the early Postclassic cemetery in Los Tamarindos (Tierra Caliente, Michoacán, Mexico) containing human cremains have been excavated with the support of a CT scan. Selected examples from this sample will be presented to demonstrate the analytical potential of the methodology that merges bioarchaeological...
Standardization of Apartment Compounds at Teotihuacan, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How standardized were the apartment compounds at Teotihuacan? Some archaeologists have claimed they were highly standardized in size and form, while others have claimed they are all different. How can this question be answered rigorously? We investigate indications of standardization in the apartment compounds of Teotihuacan, Mexico using a geo-referenced...
Stepping Out: The Maya Underworld and the Red Temple at Cacaxtla (2018)
The murals of Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala, have long thrown the issue of Central Mexico-Maya interaction into high relief. There we find the richest evidence of interaction between these two cultural zones, though whether this amounts to citation, appropriation, fusion, or immigration is open to debate and contestation. This paper re-examines the stairway murals of the Red Temple for what they tell us about a Maya world seen through a Central Mexican lens. A particular focus falls on the link between...
A Symbolic Consideration of Birds in Teotihuacan and Mexico-Tenochtitlan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pre-Columbian material and visual culture encapsulate ideologies and symbolism of the Mesoamerican past. Birds play important roles in Mesoamerican societies, both as daily sources of food and in symbolic and ideological contexts found in ceramic and sculptural iterations combined with archaeological and zooarchaeological contexts. This paper will examine...
Take My Heart, Take My Head: Death among Gods in the Codex Borgia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual violence is well represented in the Codex Borgia, a masterpiece from early sixteenth-century Central Mexico. Narrative scenes depict Venus gods alongside deities honored during seasonal *veintena festivals known from the Valley of Mexico and Tlaxcala. The Aztec Tlacaxipehualiztli festival...
The Tarascan Landscapes of the City of Tzintzuntzan: Dwelling in the Hillsides and in the Lakes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient prehispanic city of Tzintzuntzan was a cosmopolitan and highly stratified settlement that is distributed between two great hills, the Tariaqueri and the Yahuarato. Its ancient builders gained flat land...
Tarascan Presence in Central South Michoacan. New Researches (2018)
For the last five years the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia set up an archaeological project in the central south portion of the state of Michoacan in the Zirahuen and Balsas river basins. A systematic survey had been made in a large area identifying dozens of sites never previously recorded, some of them with a clear Tarascan component. In spite of, in this paper we will present the results of the research made at the Tarascan sites in the limits of the highlands and the Tierra...
Technical Examination of Mural Painting Fragments from Plaza of the Columns Complex of Teotihuacan: A Comparative Study (2018)
The discovery of numerous Maya-style mural painting fragments during the archaeological excavations in the Plaza of the Columns Complex of Teotihuacan, sprouted debates concerning if these murals were drawn by a Maya artist. In order to compare the pigments composition and the pictorial technique of these paintings with mural paintings from the Maya area from the Classic Period, a non-invasive characterization of the thin ground layer of stucco and the pigments used in the painting discovered...
The Technical Study of Two 16th Century Mexican Pictographic Documents in the NMAI Collection (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two mid-16th century Mexican pictographic documents in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, a codex on amate paper from the Valley of Mexico and a lienzo on a large cotton textile from Puebla, have...
A Technological Approach of Textile Production in Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan (2018)
Textile production had a pivotal role among Late Postclassic societies including ancient Tlaxcallan, a prominent altepetl of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. Several scholars have studied prehispanic cloth and garments production based on 16th century historical sources, but using little archaeological evidence. In particular, poor attention has been paid on the technology of textile production based on archaeological artifacts, especially in relation to spinning techniques and the different fibers...
A Technological Reconstruction of Preindustrial Copper Smelting in Central Michoacan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The earliest evidence for copper metallurgy in Mesoamerica comes from West Mexico, dating to ca. AD 800. Over a period of approximately 700 years, a wide variety of artifacts was manufactured, typically decorations and other valuable non-utilitarian items from several contexts....
Templo Mayor and Representations of the Flower World: agriculture, fire, sacrifice, death, rebirth, and imperialistic agendas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of our primary sources of descriptive information about the Flower World comes from Central Mexican colonial historical documents. While ethnohistorical accounts have portrayed this world with shared beliefs of the floral paradise, this paper provides a complementary scenario, by...
Teotihuacan Sound Mapping: Exploring the Sonic Sphere of the City of the Gods (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Teotihuacan Sound Mapping Project explores the role that sound and music played in the ancient urban environment of the site. The sound tools and musical instruments of Teotihuacan are re-created and played in different architectural settings, and the instrumental and architectural acoustics subsequently...
Thirty Years Later. Revisiting the Tarascan City of Las Milpillas and Its Environment, Malpaís de Zacapu, Michoacán (2018)
Thirty years ago, investigations in the city of Las Milpillas in the Malpaís of Zacapu, provided unprecedented insights on the origins of Late Postclassic tarascan social organization. One was the highlighting of a unique kind of urban organization upon lava flows ; as in all four tarascan cities of the Malpaís. Yet, unlike its counterparts, Las Milpillas specificity resides in the fact that a site portion lies upon older volcanics, providing arable lands at hand for the city dwellers to use....